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Project Management Failure of Hurricane Katrina

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Submitted By csroberts88
Words 2876
Pages 12
Christopher Roberts
April 29, 2015
93174/Man 3583
Class Project
The Disaster Relief Project of Post- Hurricane Katrina

On August 29, 2005 the levees broke and started the flooding of the city with depths of more than 10 feet of water in some places. The category 4 storm had already taken its toll on the city. The head of DHS Michael Chertoff waited a total of 24 hours after receiving knowledge that the levees were breached to make the designation that hurricane Katrina was a "incident of national significance--requiring an extensive and well-coordinated response by federal, state, local tribal and nongovernmental authorities to save lives, minimize damage and provide the basis for long-term community and economic recovery." What followed this statement was a project management failure of catastrophic measures.
I believe there are 4 major project management failures that could have been handled differently by local, state, and FEMA- communication, planning, leadership, and execution. FEMA, Local, and State officials failed to plan for events like this, they failed to communicate with each other during/after the event, they failed to show leadership, and they failed to execute any of the plans presented in a timely manner (one of which was to provide the trapped residents of the city basic needs of food and water). Given that New Orleans is essentially a bowl by being that about half of the city and surrounding areas are above sea level and the other half is up to 6 feet below sea level, the failure of the rescue efforts, and overall readiness of the city of New Orleans was a terrible joke in the midst of this devastating natural phenomenon.
This is not your typical project management failure even though many lessons have been learned from this event. Hurricane Katrina can be viewed as a failure of project management that did not have proper management to be

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